Apart from an introductory and a concluding chapter, this volume contains seven contributions addressing key theoretical and pedagogical issues of Second Language Acquisition (L2A) research. It explores aspects of the L2A debate such as ultimate attainment and L1 transfer, and the effect of L1 in L2 processing, by combining standpoints from generative linguistics and theories of processing, while taking at the same time into account the role of cultural knowledge and sociopragmatic information in developing L2 competence. Julia Herschensohn’s introduction sets the stage by introducing the reader to the key questions of the current L2A debate; it also provides instructive summaries of the chapters that follow. An added advantage of the volume is that, in its conclusion, it explicitly discusses the pedagogical implications of each of the studies for actual teaching practice.

The first chapter, “Specificity affects determiner choice even when definiteness transfers”, by Asya Achimova and Viviane Déprez, addresses the issue of L1 transfer on the basis of data collected from beginning, intermediate and advanced L2 speakers of French (with English as L1) and establishes that L1 transfer facilitates article selection. However, errors in specificity, especially by less proficient speakers and in contexts where definiteness and specificity clash, lead the authors to the conclusion that specificity has a pragmatic flavor: it reflects the knowledge of the speaker for a specific referent. Errors are therefore more likely to arise when learners fail to identify – often due to cognitive pressure – the exact nature of this knowledge (i.e., the uniqueness or familiarity of a referent for the speaker and the hearer).

In the next chapter, “What can acquisition studies contribute to the instruction of register? A case study of French”, Deborah Arteaga and Julia Herschensohn investigate data from two advanced learners of L2 French, collected over the span of one year. Although the language learners of their study have quite distinct profiles – one is an academic learner and the other a more naturalistic one – they both overgeneralize a single register (formal and informal, respectively), which leads the authors to conclude that instruction must incorporate activities that also target the development of sociolinguistic aspects of L2.

The third chapter, “The L2 acquisition of French morphosyntax by Anglophone learners: Refocusing on the input”, by Dalila Ayoun, explores the acquisition of TAM (tense-aspect-modality) by L2 French learners of diverse linguistic backgrounds (heritage French, heritage Spanish and L1 English). The analysis of data collected from cloze tests reveals that speaker accuracy varied to the extent that it could not be clearly determined whether they acquired a well contrasted system. All speakers showed a disproportionate mastery of some forms (e.g., IndPres) over others and especially in stative over telic and activity verbs. This finding compels the author to question the suitability of cloze tests as an assessment tool because, even though they require a specific, targeted input form, they are often quite demanding cognitively.

The fourth chapter, “When nonnative speakers show distinction: Syntax and task interactions in long-distance anaphoric dependencies in French”, is written by Laurent Dekydtspotter and Charlene Gilbert. The authors investigate the resolution of long-distance anaphora by a group of educated native speakers of French and a group of advanced non-native speakers of the same language, who are nevertheless familiar with experimental procedures. Using a moving window design in their experiment, they found that the two groups had comparable reaction times and accuracy. More importantly, syntax facilitated processing since the groups parsed pronouns like those in à propos de lui/elle ‘about him/her’ and le/la concernant ‘regarding him/her’ faster in contexts where they were bound, that is, when the anaphors gained coreference through syntax.

The fifth chapter, “Age effects and morphological markedness in L2 processing of gender agreement: Insights from eye tracking”, by Nuria Sagarra, explores the effects of age (e.g., whether intermediate L2 Spanish learners with English as L1 can process L2 gender agreement that is absent in their L1) and morphological markedness (e.g., whether agreement of adjectives with feminine/marked nouns is more difficult than with masculine/default ones). Using eye tracking data, the author illustrates that both groups showed sensitivity to violations (especially of number), even when marked (i.e. feminine) gender forms were involved. Her findings lend support to the view that adult L2 learners can process grammatical structures that are not present in their L1. An immediate consequence of this assumption is that their errors cannot be attributed to defective grammars but are rather triggered by cognitive load pressures during processing.

In the sixth chapter, “Finding their heads: How immigrant adults posit L2 functional projections”, Anne Vainikka and Martha Young-Scholten follow an Organic Grammar approach to L2 acquisition on the basis of evidence from L2 German, English and Dutch. The authors argue that in L2, as in L1, morphosyntax develops organically from a minimal tree structure (with all functional projections present) in a bottom-up fashion on the basis of evidence provided by the ambient (i.e., L2) language, and not by L1. Beginning and even intermediate immigrant L2 learners have a simple morphosyntax but recruit non-target functional elements (‘placeholders’) in the process of figuring out what fills in a given functional head.

The last study is Bridget Yaden’s “The acquisition environment for instructed L2 learners: Implementing hybrid and online language courses”. The author reports on the positive results of a two-year pilot project that involved teaching hybrid and online classes of L2 Spanish at a liberal arts college in the US. Interestingly, students achieved the same proficiency and cultural knowledge of the target language regardless of the format of the course (online, blended or face-to-face).

The editor’s concluding remarks summarize the contribution of the volume and of each study separately to the key topics of the contemporary L2A debate. Although somewhat repetitive, they tie the pivotal contribution of each study nicely together and highlight the collective findings of the volume. More importantly, Deborah Arteaga highlights the pedagogical implications of the studies’ results for L2 teaching. Students in beginning and intermediate classes should be exposed to both formal and informal registers in classroom exercises (Chapter 2), whereas instructors should spend more time on teaching the featural properties of articles (Chapter 1), advanced syntactic structures (Chapter 4) and marked morphological forms (Chapter 5). They also ought to take into consideration processing limitations, thus reducing the processing load in grammatical drills (Chapter 5) and, especially, in cloze tests (Chapter 3). In addition, incorporating new technologies even in traditional, face-to-face classroom teaching (Chapter 7) and embracing practices that will increase the influx of input received by L2 learners (Chapter 6) are argued to have a positive effect on L2 development.

The contributions in the volume succeed in delivering some very interesting empirical findings. First, L2 learners – even advanced ones – appear to have problems in mastering not only complex or marked linguistic structures but also information related to sociopragmatic aspects of language, thus failing to attain native-like proficiency in L2. Second, irrespective of whether L1 transfer does or does not facilitate the acquisition of L2 grammar, other factors, such as cognitive load and processing pressure, play a role in shaping a learner’s L2 competence and critically affect performance. At the same time, processing is found to be faster when syntax is involved, as in the case of long-distance anaphora. Still, it remains an open question whether the L2 learner’s grammatical knowledge mirrors that of the native speaker. Some studies attribute differences between L1 and L2 speakers in processing morphosyntactic information to cognitive load (e.g., Chapters 1, 3, 5), whereas others point to grammatical deficit (e.g., Chapter 6).

To conclude, the volume is a welcome contribution to the existing L2A literature and makes for fascinating reading for both L1 and L2 theoreticians, as well as scholars and students with a general interest in the pedagogical implications of current L2 research and its application to (online and/or classroom) teaching.